Author: Roy Olivier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190257431
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Olivier Roy, world-renowned authority on Islam and politics, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and socio-cultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate, emotional access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture. The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to fundamentalist faiths, such as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism. These religions either reconnect adherents to their culture through casual referents, like halal fast food, or maintain their momentum through purification rituals, such as speaking in tongues, a practice that allows believers to utter a language that is entirely their own. Instead of a return to traditional religious worship, we are now witnessing the individualisation of faith and the disassociation of faith communities from ethnic and national identities. Roy explores the options now available to powers that hope to integrate or control these groups; and whether marginalisation or homogenisation will further divide believers from their culture.
Author: Ephraim Radner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781481310796
Category : Holy Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Charts the rise of pneumatology alongside developments in modern history and proposes an alternate doctrine of the Spirit to address perennial existential questions"--
Author: Olivier Roy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190099933
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Latest from Olivier Roy offering a brilliant analysis of Europe's ongoing culture wars over identity, immigration and Islam, and what these mean for Christianity. As populism rises and historic identities are hotly contested, the idea of the 'Christian West' is under the spotlight.
Author: Mateen Elass
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310298601
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Find out how the Koran resembles the Bible—and the drastic ways in which it differs. Understanding the Koran gives you an essential grasp of Islam's holy book: where it came from, what it teaches, how Muslims view it, and how the Allah of the Koran compares with the God of the Bible. Cherished as the final, perfect revelation of God's will by 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide, the Koran has become a part of American life. What do you know about the holy book that shapes the lives and views of your neighbors and a fifth of the world's population? Written by a pastor who was born to a Muslim father and raised in Saudi Arabia, Understanding the Koran gives you a fascinating, easy-to-understand overview that will show you: Why the background behind the Koran is important to understanding it. How the Koran came into existence. A summary of the main teachings of the Koran, including what it says about Jesus and the crucifixion. Similarities and differences between Muslim and Christian views of God. What the Koran teaches about Jihad and holy war. What the Koran teaches about heaven and hell and the final destinies of the human soul. Giving you an essential grasp of Islam's holy book, Understanding the Koran points you to the one thing that can draw your Muslim friends to Jesus—his love, demonstrated to them through you. Discussion questions make it possible to use this book in group studies.
Author: Olivier Roy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542038
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301
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Book Description
Olivier Roy is one of the world's leading experts on political Islam. But he is not only a scholar—he is also a traveler. Roy's keen and iconoclastic insights emerge from a lifetime of study combined with intrepid exploration through Afghanistan and Central Asia. In this book-length interview, Roy tells the lively and colorful story of his many adventures and discoveries in a variety of social and political settings and how they have come to shape his understanding of the Islamic world and its complex recent history. In Search of the Lost Orient is a candid, personal account of the experiences that led Roy to challenge his youthful ideas of an untouched, romanticized East and build a new intellectual framework to better understand and cohabit with the religions, politics, and cultures of the East, West, North, and South. In conversation with Jean-Louis Schlegel of the French magazine Esprit, Roy offers insight into the key themes of his career. Roy's immersion in the complexities of many Central Asian territories started him on his critique of the idea of an essentialized Islam. Alongside tales of backpacking from Paris to Kabul, his Afghan decade during the Soviet invasion, and official travel to post-Soviet Central Asia in the 1990s, Roy reflects on the nature of political and humanitarian engagement in this part of the world. He recounts his formative years, education, and developing political commitments and speaks to his evolving place within France's shifting intellectual and religious cultures. This book outlines Roy's lifelong practice—a combination of deliberate research goals and chance encounters—that examines Islam, immigration, and, more broadly, the future of cultures, religions, and secularism in the face of globalization. Both a significant intellectual autobiography and a compelling travelogue through some of the world's pivotal places, In Search of the Lost Orient offers a striking testimony to the many facets of an exceptional thinker.
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551991764
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
Author: Pope Paul VI.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 30
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Book Description
This document's purpose is to spell out the Church's understanding of the nature of revelation--the process whereby God communicates with human beings. It touches upon questions about Scripture, tradition, and the teaching authority of the Church. The major concern of the document is to proclaim a Catholic understanding of the Bible as the "word of God." Key elements include: Trinitarian structure, roles of apostles and bishops, and biblical reading in a historical context.
Author: Manlio Graziano
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543913
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Religions are reemerging in the social, political, and economic spheres previously occupied and dominated by secular institutions and ideologies. In the wake of crises exposing the limits of secular modernity, religions have again become significant players in domestic and international politics. At the same time, the Catholic Church has sought a "holy alliance" among the world's faiths to recentralize devout influence, an important, albeit little-noticed, evolution in international relations. Holy Wars and Holy Alliance explores the nation-state's current crisis in order to better understand the religious resurgence's implications for geopolitics. Manlio Graziano looks at how the Catholic Church promotes dialogue and action linking world religions, and examines how it has used its material, financial, and institutional strength to gain power and increase its profile in present-day international politics. Challenging the idea that modernity is tied to progress and secularization, Graziano documents the "return" or the "revenge" of God in all facets of life. He shows that tolerance, pluralism, democracy, and science have not triumphed as once predicted. To fully grasp the destabilizing dynamics at work today, he argues, we must appreciate the nature of religious struggles and political holy wars now unfolding across the international stage.
Author: Ron E. Hassner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460417
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
Sacred sites offer believers the possibility of communing with the divine and achieving deeper insight into their faith. Yet their spiritual and cultural importance can lead to competition as religious groups seek to exclude rivals from practicing potentially sacrilegious rituals in the hallowed space and wish to assert their own claims. Holy places thus create the potential for military, theological, or political clashes, not only between competing religious groups but also between religious groups and secular actors. In War on Sacred Grounds, Ron E. Hassner investigates the causes and properties of conflicts over sites that are both venerated and contested; he also proposes potential means for managing these disputes. Hassner illustrates a complex and poorly understood political dilemma with accounts of the failures to reach settlement at Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif, leading to the clashes of 2000, and the competing claims of Hindus and Muslims at Ayodhya, which resulted in the destruction of the mosque there in 1992. He also addresses more successful compromises in Jerusalem in 1967 and Mecca in 1979. Sacred sites, he contends, are particularly prone to conflict because they provide valuable resources for both religious and political actors yet cannot be divided. The management of conflicts over sacred sites requires cooperation, Hassner suggests, between political leaders interested in promoting conflict resolution and religious leaders who can shape the meaning and value that sacred places hold for believers. Because a reconfiguration of sacred space requires a confluence of political will, religious authority, and a window of opportunity, it is relatively rare. Drawing on the study of religion and the study of politics in equal measure, Hassner's account offers insight into the often-violent dynamics that come into play at the places where religion and politics collide.
Author: Olivier Roy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849046980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 138
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Book Description
Islamic State has replaced Al Qaeda as the great global threat of the twenty-first century, the bogeyman we have all come to fear. But Daesh started as a local movement, rooted in the resentment of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria. It is they who have lost most in the geo-strategic shift in the balance of power in the region over the last thirty years, as Iranian-backed Shias have mobilised politically and advanced on the social and economic fronts. How has Islamic State been able to muster support far beyond its initial constituency in the Arab world and to attract tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, including converts to Islam, and seemingly countless supporters online? In this compelling intervention into the debate about Islamic State's origins and future prospects, the renowned French sociologist of religion, Olivier Roy, argues that the group mobilised a highly sophisticated narrative, reviving the myth of the Caliphate and recasting it into a modern story of heroism, death and nihilism, using a very contemporary aesthetic of violence, well entrenched amid a youth culture that has turned global and violent.
